May 27, 1994
THE FLINTSTONES was undeniably one of the big movie events of the summer of ’94. Sure, it got poor reviews, and I don’t think I’ve ever heard of anyone who thought it was anything more than fine, but people definitely went to see it – it made almost $300 million over its budget, the #5 grossing movie of the year. Since we all agree that box office is important because movies are a business etc. etc., this figure proves that THE FLINTSTONES made a bigger mark than SCHINDLER’S LIST, PULP FICTION, THE CROW, THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION, SHORT CUTS, ED WOOD, and CLERKS that year. Only THE LION KING, FORREST GUMP, TRUE LIES and THE SANTA CLAUSE were more impactful. Sorry, that’s just science. There are fossils to prove it.
So I thought it was important to include in this series, and also I wanted my sainted wife, who had never seen it, to watch it with me. (Don’t worry, it was fine, she didn’t hate it.) But when I did that and then I re-read my review of the movie from the Summer Flings series in 2017, I realized that oh jesus, I covered this very thoroughly at that time. Didn’t leave much more to write about.
That’s your tip off that if you want a straight review of the movie, read that one, it’s pretty good. I go into the McDonalds tie-ins and the ridiculous merchandising, and I try to explain how cool it is now to see a movie with so much work put into building this cartoon world in live action with sets, props, costumes and Jim Henson puppets. I think it’s in a category with POPEYE, BARBIE and SPEED RACER in that respect, and even though it’s easily my least favorite on that list, it’s a notable list to be on.
But you can read all that over there, so this one will be more theoretical. Given the generational shift I’ve been trying to explore in this series, I’m mostly gonna use this piece to look at why THE FLINTSTONES could exist in 1994, what it says about American and/or Hollywood values at the time, and how things are different now.
Just like MAVERICK the week before, THE FLINTSTONES was based on an old TV show that boomers might’ve grown up on in its original run from 1960-1966. But I don’t think it’s that familiar kind of “hey, remember this?” nostalgia trip, because much like Scooby-Doo, The Flintstones had remained omnipresent for children for decades. The original series was designed to appeal to the whole family, but when I was a kid in the ‘80s we had more kiddy oriented spin-offs like The Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm Show and The Flintstone Kids on Saturday mornings, in addition to reruns of the original show on weekday afternoons. I think I found the original show a little more appealing, and I doubt I knew what decade it was left over from. Even kids who weren’t watching any of those knew the characters from ads for Flintstsones children’s vitamins, Fruity Pebbles and Cocoa Pebbles cereal, and Push Up ice cream pops. If the show disappeared entirely I’m sure Fred and Barney could’ve continued being product mascots, they became so well known for that.
So in 1994 it wasn’t that weird that they’d make a movie of The Flintstones. Seemed like kind of a no-brainer. It was a pop culture touchstone for all age groups, and various producers had been trying to make live action Flintstones and Jetsons movies for almost a decade. Steven E. DIE HARD de Souza received final credit because he wrote the first version in 1987 for producer Joel Silver and director Richard Donner, though from the sounds of it they started over from scratch multiple times.
A major difference with those other movies I mentioned is that they don’t seem to consider straight adaptation to be enough. POPEYE, SPEED RACER and BARBIE meld the stylized worlds of their inspirations with live action, but they use that as a jumping off point for larger emotions or ideas. THE FLINTSTONES doesn’t really do that, it just tries to stay faithful to the source material, and maybe that’s not enough. What’s a novel enough gimmick to fill a show feels a little shallow poured into a feature film. Maybe they should’ve stuck with the 1990 script by Mitch Markowitz (GOOD MORNING VIETNAM) that was supposedly inspired by The Grapes of Wrath. That sounds a little more ambitious.
When you try to just make the show in the shape of a movie the problem you run into is the perfect simplicity of the show. By design it’s just generic half hour sitcom type plots – for example, the first episode was about Fred and Barney trying to get out of going to the opera because it’s at the same time as their bowling match. The novelty and humor is in this joke that in the stone age they live just like we do, it’s just that their cars and TVs and record players and garbage disposals and things are based in the old technologies of stone, wood and talking dinosaurs. I guess it would be called “world building” now. Come to think of it, the approach isn’t all that different from some of the Pixar movies (think ONWARD re-creating the modern world with fantasy creatures). But Pixar takes a premise like that and tries to give it a movie plot, while THE FLINTSTONES is attempting the more delicate balance of seeming enough like a sitcom plot to resemble the show and enough like a movie plot to feel worth of your 90 minutes. To me the sitcom part ends up feeling a little empty but the movie part feels like a little too much.
Newspapers and magazines at the time were quick to note the trend of movies-based-on-old-TV-shows, and to be fair most of them didn’t try to justify themselves with ideas – they did it with casting. A 1993 LA Times article credited Angelica Huston’s role in THE ADDAMS FAMILY for making it “socially acceptable” for big name actors to do those movies. It mentions Harrison Ford starring in an upcoming movie of THE FUGITIVE (which obviously happened) but also Geena Davis doing a movie of Honey West and Mel Gibson as The Saint (which didn’t). The article also mentioned Davis and Catherine O’Hara as rumored candidates to play Wilma in THE FLINTSTONES, with Rosie O’Donnell and Tracey Ullman as possibilities for Betty.
I think it’s fair to say the cast they ended up with is pretty magical. The world loves John Goodman, but when the hell else would he be the obvious choice to star in a big expensive summer tentpole movie? If they said he was playing Batman, Dick Tracy, Bret Maverick, The Shadow or Jack Ryan people would have scoffed, but you say he’s playing Fred Flintstone and it’s like – yeah, of course! No one better, either for the body type or the performance. He even has years of working class sitcom dad experience under his belt. I think the essence of Fred Flintstone is more of an asshole than the essence of John Goodman, so his sweet side seems more genuine than in the cartoon. But that’s okay. Better than going in the other direction.
I also can’t think of anyone better to play Barney than Rick Moranis (STREETS OF FIRE). How is it possible there was a guy who was short and experienced in doing cartoonish voices and playing nice guys who are kinda dumb and was a major name in big time movies? It’s weird that he even exists! He was suggested by Danny DeVito, who recognized that he was wrong for the character when he turned down producer Steven Spielrock.
Meanwhile, Elizabeth Perkins (BIG) is a lesser known face who disappears into the established personality of this cartoon character Wilma, and O’Donnell (A LEAGUE OF THEIR OWN) was controversial as Betty Rubble for not being skinny – yep, those guys were out there whining even before the internet – but she actually does the voice and inhabits the character very well. There’s nobody in the movie that’s not game. And it happened to be made during the window when Kyle McLachlan could play the main villain in a big movie. I do have a hard time looking at him in this costume and not picturing his action figure where he has the same head but a stubby little cartoon body, but that’s not his fault.
I would guess that most kids today don’t know The Flintstones, not as much because it’s old as because most kids don’t have to settle for whatever’s on. They’re used to clicking on the thing they want. If they even have TV there are many channels and few of them showing The Flintstones. (They might still take the vitamins or eat the cereal, though.)
So if anybody still watches this movie it must be the grown ups, which makes sense, since the plot is about jobs and marriage and shit anyway. What strikes me about it now is how it depicts that American dream of the sixties and beyond, of sitcoms, of the middle class, of my parents’ generation. They tell you that life is you find a wife who forgives you for being a lunkhead, you get a steady job, buy a big house with lots of things, get a dog and a cat, have a kid, have a next door neighbor you drink beer and bowl with, try to get That Big Promotion at work. That’s part of the story here. Barney feels sorry for Fred doing terrible on an aptitude test at work, and switches them so that Fred can get a better job with an office, a hot secretary (Halle Berry, JUNGLE FEVER) and a Dictabird. It’s nice at first but then there’s resentment and class treachery and Barney gets fired and Fred is being scammed and etc. Movie shit.
The big difference between the modern stone age families of then and now is that today’s Wilma would probly want to have a job too. And if she didn’t they probly couldn’t afford that house. I realize that I did believe this was the standard life path, and it was still accessible for many of my generation. I have friends and cousins that did all that, but I didn’t have it in me. I didn’t have an urgency to have kids. I did want money and a house but not as much as I wanted to stick to my artistic shit. I didn’t want to be like my friends’ dads growing up who used to do cool stuff like write a book or make a movie. I couldn’t give it up. So here I am a middle aged man, happily married but no kids, some savings but not enough to buy a house, especially without moving to the suburbs, which I never want to do. I’m not the Bedrock type. What used to be my idea of normal life is now my idea of what other people do.
But that was mostly my choice, what worries me more is how many people younger than me who actually want that lifestyle don’t have much of a shot at it. Education costs more, housing costs more, jobs pay less and don’t take care of you as much. What would be the equivalent to working at the rock quarry – an Amazon warehouse job? You just can’t pay for a house and a car and a wife and a kid with a job like that anymore. It’s not a thing. And then going out and buying those giant ribs!? No way.
Man, for it to be ’94 again. When the summer movies were only okay and most of the music on the radio was pretty bad but at least it seemed like you were gonna make it.
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Summer of ’94 connections: Somehow this has a song (“Hit & Run Holiday”) by My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult, who also appear in and have a song on the soundtrack for THE CROW. I guess we’d have to call these the two hottest soundtracks of the summer. Weirdly there’s also an Us3 song on the end credits with Def Jef rapping about The Flintstones. Honestly I was thinking the music on this is much cooler than expected – the “BC-52s” scene is a highlight – but Green Jelly rewording “Anarchy in the UK” Bedrock style crosses into my cringe zone.
Weirdest cameo: There’s a TV show within the movie called Bedrock’s Most Wanted (hosted by Jay Leno) that re-enacts what happens to Fred in the movie, and according to the credits his boss is played by Sam Raimi in the re-enactment. I don’t think you can really see him, though.
June 4th, 2024 at 7:41 am
In all fairness, there is one actor more suited to playing Fred than Goodman.
Unfortunately, The Great One was six years six feet under by the time the movie was produced.
But Goodman does a good impersonation.